When I was at grammar school, our “social studies“ teacher told us that one reason for the world’s overpopulation lies in the fact that many countries know no social – in particular retirement – systems. Consequently, the only way for people living in those countries to prevent poverty in old age is to have many children. Collectively, of course, this will then cause even more poverty and thus generate a vicious circle.
In those days, this theory sounded absolutely plausible to me. “Give poor nations reliable retirement systems and the problem of overpopulation will solve itself”. Later in life, I heard exactly this kind of message again and again. That, too, sounded plausible to me.
Today, I hear that we in Germany have too few children. National family policy aims at increasing the number of children per woman. I do not wish to comment on this. After all, there are many children living in this world.
However, I do not believe the reason for our lack of children can be found in our retirement systems. Mostly, I receive another message: the fear of the future and of a life-long commitment; a change in the willingness to agree to a lasting partnership; trivial ego-centrism; giving consumption priority in life and focussing on (what seems to be) self-fulfilment. Socially spoken, intelligent young women in particular – even if they live in a partnership – consider it the normal course of events in their lives to practice the “no-child version”.
You might feel about this however you want to. In my opinion, everyone must make their own decisions, also with respect to how she realizes her emotional and emphatic need: in a partnership, as an artist or by living with pets – you name it.
It seems, however, that our Federal Family Minister had the same “social studies” teacher I had. She sticks to what I learned at school. Reversing the conclusion, she says: if a reliable retirement system will produce too few children, then all I have to do in order to have more children is abolish this retirement system.
Now isn’t that a logical and reasonable policy?
RMD
(Translated by EG)
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